Traditionally, baby strollers have been used to push an infant slowly on a relatively hard, smooth floor or sidewalk. As a result, the strollers were made small and light. These strollers work well enough at slow speed, but are extremely unwieldy and even dangerous on rough surfaces or at higher speeds.
As parents have become more health conscious in recent times, jogging and fast walking has become a popular pastime. Because baby strollers were not designed to be operated at high speed or on rough terrain, parents could jog or fast walk only when another person was available to babysit. As any parent knows, it is not always easy to find babysitters, so the ability of the parent to stay in shape by jogging or fast walking was severely limited.
Even for non-jogging parents, the need for an improved baby stroller has been apparent. The small, plastic wheels customarily used for the baby strollers are almost useless when it is desired to walk with an infant in a grassy park or on a rough road or sidewalk. Parents end up not walking with the infant at all or only walking in limited areas.
Recently, all-terrain baby strollers have been designed to overcome these problems. These strollers typically employ much larger wheels, often large bicycle tires. The stroller frame and frame connections are constructed to be stronger and larger to handle the heavy duty use they may receive. It is now quite common to see a parent pushing an infant while jogging, fast walking or even just slow walking in grassy, bumpy areas or over other rough terrain.
These new strollers have their drawbacks. The increased size and durable construction make the stroller much larger and heavier than in the past, and as a result much more difficult to transport, especially as car sizes have decreased. Not everyone has access to large vehicles or to tools to take the stroller apart for transport. Even if tools were available, it is not practical or convenient to take the time needed to dismantle the stroller each time it is to be transported. Further, the larger size of all-terrain strollers makes their storage difficult.
The present invention solves these problems by providing a quick, easy way to collapse an all-terrain or other style stroller for transport and storage and to remove its wheels.